I'm not struggling for two reasons:
1. I was invested in 2008. That was a time when it honestly looked like the entire world's banking industry was going to collapse. I don't know if I can even convey how catastrophically bad that would be, and we were looking right at it. Economically-speaking, that was many times scarier than today, because,
2. The pandemic, while bad, isn't nearly as bad as it could be. The 1918 flu pandemic was far more deadly, and like H1N1 a few years back, killed the young and healthy. COVID is mainly taking out people like my parents, who aren't driving the consumer economy the way younger people do. The data we can find from 1918-1920 shows that the U.S. economy appeared to bounce back fairly quickly from that pandemic, so I think it's likely that once this pandemic passes, a lot of people will start spending more and economies will recover fairly quickly.
The main lesson I took away from 2008 was identifying the appropriate asset allocation that allows me to sleep at night at times like this. I retired this spring, and had created a de facto "bond/cash tent" because I'd planned on a bunch of capital expenditures this year. Instead, that cash will be tiding me over until things recover, and I can go several years living off of that and dividends before I need to actually sell any stocks or bonds.
I can't stress enough that if you're anxious about losing money, reduce your stock percentage in your asset allocation. There will be many many more crashes of 30% +/- 10% in your life, and if they're worrying you every time, you're going to spend a lot of time unhappy.
